Licence to bill - 007 racks up £8 billion worth of damage in 50 year career

Roger Moore as James Bond in Octopussy

Published:17:00Wednesday 28 October 2015

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Roger Moore is the most destructive James Bond ever, causing £4.6 billion damage as 007 – including destroying an entire space station, it has been revealed.

Daniel Craig stacked up almost £449 million worth of damages as Bond in the latest installment, Spectre

The most destruction (£4.3bn) was caused during Moonraker (1979). The least destruction (£419,280) was in Thunderball (1964)

Sean Connery was the most dashing, Pierce Brosnan the deadliest, Timothy Dalton the most serious and Daniel Craig perhaps the ‘definitive’ Bond, but eyebrows will be raised today by the news that the king of the eyebrow raise himself, Roger Moore, is the most destructive 007 of all time.

Experts at MORE TH>N Insurance have estimated that Roger Moore has caused an astonishing £4.6 billion worth of damage to vehicles, buildings, artifacts, possessions and the environment during his 12-year career as Bond, which is sure to leave more than just his vodka-martini shaken.

Nowhere is Moore’s mayhem more evident than in the 1979 film Moonraker, in which his Bond plays a part in the obliteration of five space shuttles and an entire space station: an estimated £4.1 billion cost that’s more wince-inducing than all of Roger Moore’s one-liners put together.

Not just for their eyes only, everything from £3 smashed ashtrays and £25 stolen shirts to £300 million super villain lairs and £1 billion submarines has been documented and costed, to reveal in excess of £8 billion of destruction spanning 50 years – almost as much as the entire GDP of Jamaica, where Ian Fleming famously lived and wrote the Bond books.

Accounting for inflation and values in today’s money, the most destructive Bonds are:

Roger Moore: £4,630,196,134 (£661,456,590 average per film)

Pierce Brosnan: £1,905,765,384 (£476,441,346 average per film)

Sean Connery: £1,297,087,560 (£216,181,260 average per film)

Daniel Craig: £449,183,670 (£132,582,275 average per film)

Timothy Dalton: £80,058,778 (£70,082,275 average per film)

George Lazenby: £36,417,110 (£36,417,110 average per film)

After Moonraker, Pierce Brosnan’s 1999 turn The World Is Not Enough had the next highest damages bill of £1.1 billion thanks to the underwater destruction of a Russian nuclear submarine. And despite being the least destructive overall the one-time Bond George Lazenby still managed to rack up £36 million of destruction On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).

Fast forward to current Bond, Daniel Craig, and after a relatively ‘careful’ trilogy of films, Craig’s 007 has sent his destruction bill through the roof with new instalment Spectre. Indeed, over 148 minutes Craig’s Bond manages to amass damages of approximately £449 million. What’s more, in the Spectre trailer alone over £7.5m destruction is witnessed - which is more than the total damages incurred in Thunderball, Octopussy and For Your Eyes Only combined.

According to the findings, in the 24 official Bond films, 210 vehicles have been damaged or destroyed, causing costs in the region of £33.9 million. However, it’s not just cars that have been damaged at the hands of MI6’s most prolific agent, with £1.1 billion worth of damage also inflicted on homes, landmarks and buildings by Bond.

This includes the complete destruction of a £3m Scottish mansion in Skyfall, £8 million of havoc on the streets of St. Petersburg in Goldeneye (1995), not to mention Blofeld’s £300m volcano lair in You Only Live Twice (1967). Taking everything into account, the average cost of destruction per James Bond film currently stands at a staggering £349,165,782.